Guard Your Mind Against The World
One of the best things about traveling alone is the clarity to think.
When your traveling alone, you are forced to be alone with your thoughts. This is especially true when I am on an airplane. I am away from the world, away from everyone, away from responsibilities for a brief moment. I call this the “sitting on the toilet” epiphany. It is similar to people figuring out problems in the shower. The one thing that traveling alone, being on an airplane, sitting on the toilet, and taking a shower have in common is mental peace. In these moments, our minds are free from worry, stress, or all the other stressors our loved ones project on to us. This is why we have clarity in these moments to think clearly and find solutions to some of our problems. Just ask a parent if taking a shower is the best part of their day.
The Music You Listen To
When I was a teenager, I listened to a lot of rap music. I still do listen to rap music but I am very selective about the type of rap music I listen to. As a teenager, my mind was still an empty vessel. So whatever music I listened to shaped how I viewed the world. As adults, we may think that music is harmless and it doesn’t affect us. In a Healthline article, it states “A 2013 study in the Journal of Positive Psychology found that people who listened to upbeat music could improve their moods and boost their happiness in just two weeks”. I believe music is our soul talking to us. But if we notice a constant theme to the type of music we listen to, we need to ask ourselves a few questions. The music we listen to is an extension of how we view the world. Is the music we allow in our minds affecting us positively or negatively.
The Role You Play
We all have played roles in our lives. When I was a kid, I was extremely disruptive. My big sister, who always babysat me, was the one who had to deal with the consequences of my actions. I was known as “Angie’s bad brother”. Even in my teen years, that role was bestowed upon me begrudgingly. I would act the role of the “bad little brother” by getting into trouble as I got older and my mother was the one who dealt with the consequences of my actions instead of my sister. It took me years late into my early thirties to finally stop playing this Oscar-worthy performance of the lost soul. We are all playing roles in our lives. What separates most people is the ones who are not aware of what’s going are usually the ones who are self-destructing. What role are you playing right now and is it the role you have given yourself or was it given to you by others.
Social Media
Have you ever started your day happy and then you logged on to social media and your entire mood changes. This happens to all of us. We start our day logging in to social media first thing in the morning as if we missed something the night before. The same way the media and news market things to us by beating subconscious messages into our heads, our Facebook friends unknowingly do the same. With everything going on in the world, now is a time to filter out your feed with only things that make you feel good. Some of our friends post nothing but things that evoke negative emotions. It’s about time we unfollow them for a while. The comparison game destroys our self-esteem by comparing how we feel at the moment to everyone’s life highlights. We forget the reality in front of us and get laser-focused on how we can appear on Facebook. This takes a toll on us mentally.
Food
You remember that feeling of being hungover, the feeling of being irritated by everything and everyone because you were dehydrated. That is how some foods affect us and our minds. There are times when I find myself having mental lapses, straight-up brain fogs. I forget what I was going to do next. After a few hours of consuming fish oil supplements and some almonds, my brain is working on all cylinders afterward. To get more energy, I also had to figure out what foods were making me lazy and lethargic. In America, we eat such big food portions and all that food takes energy to digest. It also takes energy to think. Yes, we burn calories just by thinking. After a big meal, which activity do you think the body will prioritize, digesting, or thinking. Healthline states a study that “52 people found that a diet high in unhealthy ingredients resulted in lower levels of sugar metabolism in the brain and a decrease in brain tissue”.
Inner Critic
Remember those cartoons you used to watch as a kid with the main protagonist having the angel on one shoulder and the devil on the other. I think they were on to something. My old psychology teacher had my class do an experiment. We were told to count how many times we would say negative things about ourselves. As a class, we recorded and combined our stats. On average, the average student in that class spoke negatively to themselves over 100 times a day. Now imagine us adults in our everyday lives. Stopping our inner critic takes work. We have to constantly stop ourselves when we find ourselves mentally beating ourselves up. But first, we have become aware first. For most of us, talking negatively about ourselves comes easily to us as breathing.
“Our minds are constantly attacked by intruders, false stories and narratives, and negative memories replaying themselves over and over in our heads like a TV show on repeat”
